]]>A quick word: We are kicking off GigaOM Reads, a weekly column that look back at some of the important technology stories of the week and our take on the news. In addition, we will curate some of the more interesting stories and blog posts we find worth sharing – Om & Kristy.

Groupon’s 2-for-1 CEO deal: Groupon, decidedly the most non-tech company pretending to be a tech company fired Andrew Mason, founder & CEO, and replaced him with not one but two CEOs — Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis, who are taking over as co-CEOs. Not to poop on their parade, but weren’t these two gentlemen supposed to prevent the current state of chaos at the company as board members? Something stinks, and it is not kielbasa. In what seems to be a perfect exit interview, Mason had some choice things to say:

“I think in the first phase of our company, we were a glorified mailing list. We had a completely unintelligent email that we sent out once a day and we had a human sales force that was going around and procuring the deals.”

As for Mason, he is looking for a fat farm to lose what he adorably calls “Groupon 40.” I am going to miss his nonsensical utterances.

Everybody hates (or loves) Marissa Mayer & loves(or hates) Sheryl Sandberg: Well, at least everyone in media has something to say about two of the brightest and more powerful women in Silicon Valley, Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg. They were both making headlines this week for what seems to be all the wrong (or right) reasons.

By the way, those two news items sparked a lively thread on our internal messaging system.

Technology’s worst dressed guy is emasculated by phones: Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who is not exactly Bernard Arnault (CEO of LVMH, if you must ask), feels that smartphones are “emasculating.” He was speaking at the TED conference and his comments resulted in a flurry of commentary around gender issues.

“Google Glass is like one camera car for each of the thousands, possibly millions, of people who will wear the device – every single day, everywhere they go – on sidewalks, into restaurants, up elevators, around your office, into your home. From now on, starting today, anywhere you go within range of a Google Glass device, everything you do could be recorded and uploaded to Google’s cloud, and stored there for the rest of your life. You won’t know if you’re being recorded or not; and even if you do, you’ll have no way to stop it. And that, my friends, is the experience that Google Glass creates. That is the experience we should be thinking about. The most important Google Glass experience is not the user experience – it’s the experience of everyone else. The experience of being a citizen, in public, is about to change.” [Mark Hurst]

Does that future scare you? Then you should read Joel Hladeck’s amusing letter from the future that talks about why Google glasses kinda went the way of AltaVista.

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Oscars & Hard times at CGI Corral: Darlings of the big screen and red carpet took home their golden statues at the Oscars last Sunday, but not all is well for the behind-the-scenes crew. The visual effects industry is facing hard times due to foreign outsourcing and subsidies, with large and small studios alike facing layoffs and closures. You may have caught Bill Westenhofer attempting to broach the subject after winning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Life of Pi before being ushered off the stage to the theme of Jaws, which now seems oddly appropriate given that thousands of jobs are dead in the water.

Talking about Oscars, congrats to PopSugarfor launching PopSugar Live. Their live red carpet show from the Oscars got about a million views, putting them in the cable television territory. Who needs cable (TV) when you have broadband?

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Fashion and tech in one place! What could go wrong: Conde Nast rolled out the red carpet for geeks during this years’ New York Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week by hosting a first-of-its-kind fashion and tech hackathon to create new ideas around how to use technology in the industry. We do admit that does sound kinda crazy and, well, Conde Nast isn’t who we turn to for innovation tips. But then again, the fashion industry is so far behind that they need to start somewhere. We would also recommend watching out for a whole new breed of fashion media upstarts that are frankly more fun and engaging than perusing dowdy Conde Nast.

“We are beginning to learn what it is like to use the Internet to communicate with things that are not humans.” — Vint Cerf at TED2013 (via Twitter)

We at GigaOM have been on it for a while, writing about the topic for a few years now. But now we are taking the show on the road and are hosting a series of meetups like the most recent one in San Francisco and the next one in Boulder, Colorado. Our belief: Ideally, the internet of things should fade into the background; what matters is what it allows people to do.

]]>The Internet has tapped the wisdom of the crowd, but a new startup is about to test its taste.

On Monday, Venice, Calif.-based StyleSaint announced that it had raised $1.5 million in funding from Andreesen Horowitz, Catalyst Partners, Crosscut Ventures and others to turn digital fashion magazines (or so-called “stylebooks”) into crowd-inspired, designer-quality clothing.

The startup gives fashion bloggers a platform for publishing custom stylebooks, assembled by collecting images from across the Web in a Pinterest sort of way. It then lets general fashion consumers subscribe to the digital publications and socialize with them as they would any other kind of online content online.

But StyleSaint isn’t just about curation and discovery, it’s also about commerce. Using insights pulled from meta data and social engagement, the startup plans to manufacture high-quality clothing – at wholesale prices – inspired by the trends set by the crowd.

“It’s the first collaborative fashion brand,” said co-founder Allison Beal at TechCrunch Disrupt, where the startup officially launched Monday. “It’s designed by us but inspired by you.”

Working with the same manufacturer who creates apparel for Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Lauren Conrad and Rag & Bone, she said, the company plans to turn around clothing items, which will be priced around $40, in just four weeks. But it doesn’t plan to crowdsource in the same way that Kickstarter crowdsources funding or Threadless crowdsources designs. Instead, the custom designs would follow the interests, tastes and trends of the “creative collective,” the founders said.

Beal, who worked in fashion for eight years, has more recently built up her tech chops and is the company’s chief product officer and chief creative officer. Brian Garrett, who was formerly an investor (including with Crosscut Ventures), is the startup’s CEO and co-founder. Since opening the site for an invite-only beta about 45 days ago, StyleSaint has attracted more than 1,000 bloggers. It plans to release its first custom apparel collection this fall.